This chapter focuses on the theories of Afrocentrism that provided the theoretical basis for Africans to appropriate the Jewish history. By trying to restore the primacy of African influence in the ...
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This chapter focuses on the theories of Afrocentrism that provided the theoretical basis for Africans to appropriate the Jewish history. By trying to restore the primacy of African influence in the world, the Afrocentrist ideology established a link of connivance with the most remote ancestors and asserted that Africans were the true original Jewish race. Following the history of these political texts, the precursors of African Diaspora identification with the Jewish Diaspora and the subsequent roots of African Judaizing movements are considered: special attention is paid to African American Jewish movements. The symbolic role of Judaism in the religious imagination of the Hebrew-Israelites (in Israel) and the Rastafarian movement (in Jamaica) is also examined.Less

Appropriating Jewish History by the African Diaspora, Nineteenth to Twentieth Centuries

Edith Bruder

Published in print: 2008-06-05

This chapter focuses on the theories of Afrocentrism that provided the theoretical basis for Africans to appropriate the Jewish history. By trying to restore the primacy of African influence in the world, the Afrocentrist ideology established a link of connivance with the most remote ancestors and asserted that Africans were the true original Jewish race. Following the history of these political texts, the precursors of African Diaspora identification with the Jewish Diaspora and the subsequent roots of African Judaizing movements are considered: special attention is paid to African American Jewish movements. The symbolic role of Judaism in the religious imagination of the Hebrew-Israelites (in Israel) and the Rastafarian movement (in Jamaica) is also examined.

Postcolonial discourses on African Diaspora history and relations have traditionally focused intensely on highlighting the common experiences and links between black Africans and African Americans. ...
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Postcolonial discourses on African Diaspora history and relations have traditionally focused intensely on highlighting the common experiences and links between black Africans and African Americans. This is especially true of Afrocentric scholars and supporters who use Africa to construct and validate a monolithic, racial, and culturally essentialist worldview. Publications by Afrocentric scholars such as Molefi Asante, Marimba Ani, Maulana Karenga, and the late John Henrik Clarke have emphasized the centrality of Africa to the construction of Afrocentric essentialism. In the last fifteen years, however, countervailing critical scholarship has challenged essentialist interpretations of Diaspora history. Critics such as Stephen Howe, Yaacov Shavit, and Clarence Walker have questioned and refuted the intellectual and cultural underpinnings of Afrocentric essentialist ideology. This book deconstructs Afrocentric essentialism by illuminating and interrogating the problematic situation of Africa as the foundation of a racialized worldwide African Diaspora. It attempts to fill an intellectual gap by analyzing the contradictions in representations of Afrocentrism in Africa. These include multiple, conflicting, and ambivalent portraits of Africa; the use of the continent as a global, unifying identity for all blacks; the de-emphasizing and nullification of New World acculturation; and the ahistoristic construction of a monolithic African Diaspora worldwide.Less

The Case against Afrocentrism

Tunde Adeleke

Published in print: 2009-09-18

Postcolonial discourses on African Diaspora history and relations have traditionally focused intensely on highlighting the common experiences and links between black Africans and African Americans. This is especially true of Afrocentric scholars and supporters who use Africa to construct and validate a monolithic, racial, and culturally essentialist worldview. Publications by Afrocentric scholars such as Molefi Asante, Marimba Ani, Maulana Karenga, and the late John Henrik Clarke have emphasized the centrality of Africa to the construction of Afrocentric essentialism. In the last fifteen years, however, countervailing critical scholarship has challenged essentialist interpretations of Diaspora history. Critics such as Stephen Howe, Yaacov Shavit, and Clarence Walker have questioned and refuted the intellectual and cultural underpinnings of Afrocentric essentialist ideology. This book deconstructs Afrocentric essentialism by illuminating and interrogating the problematic situation of Africa as the foundation of a racialized worldwide African Diaspora. It attempts to fill an intellectual gap by analyzing the contradictions in representations of Afrocentrism in Africa. These include multiple, conflicting, and ambivalent portraits of Africa; the use of the continent as a global, unifying identity for all blacks; the de-emphasizing and nullification of New World acculturation; and the ahistoristic construction of a monolithic African Diaspora worldwide.

Social ties are not established by culture, but through “an identity of passion.” With an extensive analysis of the transcontinental “passions”—referring to the encompassing compliance to ...
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Social ties are not established by culture, but through “an identity of passion.” With an extensive analysis of the transcontinental “passions”—referring to the encompassing compliance to postcolonial subjectivity—is the opposing relationship of the discursive regimes: a hegemonic, imperialist, European-based dissertation characterized by discriminations about the black race; an anti-colonialist, African-oriented contrasting discourse focused on cultural independence and non-submission to Eurocentric principles; and a promising, luminal, integrative discussion against colonialism and subsequent to Afrocentrism. All of these complexes concentrate on the activity of thinking difference, which can only be explicitly or implicitly explained using the cultural identity and diversity paradigms that are either expressive (together with their unrecognized ethnocentric discriminations) or performative (dealing with inter-culturally flexible self-evaluative processes and methods).Less

Introduction

Tejumola Olaniyan

Published in print: 1995-08-24

Social ties are not established by culture, but through “an identity of passion.” With an extensive analysis of the transcontinental “passions”—referring to the encompassing compliance to postcolonial subjectivity—is the opposing relationship of the discursive regimes: a hegemonic, imperialist, European-based dissertation characterized by discriminations about the black race; an anti-colonialist, African-oriented contrasting discourse focused on cultural independence and non-submission to Eurocentric principles; and a promising, luminal, integrative discussion against colonialism and subsequent to Afrocentrism. All of these complexes concentrate on the activity of thinking difference, which can only be explicitly or implicitly explained using the cultural identity and diversity paradigms that are either expressive (together with their unrecognized ethnocentric discriminations) or performative (dealing with inter-culturally flexible self-evaluative processes and methods).

The central question in this chapter is why each of the study's focal traditions has experienced such different political fates in the postcolonial era: Afrocentric embracing of Shango versus an ...
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The central question in this chapter is why each of the study's focal traditions has experienced such different political fates in the postcolonial era: Afrocentric embracing of Shango versus an Indocentric blind eye toward Shakti Puja? If they are convergent in so many respects at the grassroots level, then why have these vernacular ritual traditions become so divergently politicized in the postcolonial era? The chapter accounts for this divergence in terms of differing colonial ideologies of racial subordination regarding Africans versus Indians in the articulation of hierarchy and religion in the southern Caribbean, as well as their reiterative effects within the field of postcolonial multicultural politics that emerged in the time-released wake of decolonization. Indeed, colonial ideologies of racial subordination continue to cast their spell across the terrain of religious and cultural politics in Trinidad and Tobago, despite the aims of activists on both sides to contest colonial ideology and overturn the colonization of spiritual consciousness inherited from the past. The analysis proceeds with an understanding of diasporas as alternative counter-nationalisms, and as resources for emergent postcolonialisms.Less

Religion and the Politics of Diaspora in an Era of Postcolonial Multiculturalism

Keith E. McNeal

Published in print: 2011-12-18

The central question in this chapter is why each of the study's focal traditions has experienced such different political fates in the postcolonial era: Afrocentric embracing of Shango versus an Indocentric blind eye toward Shakti Puja? If they are convergent in so many respects at the grassroots level, then why have these vernacular ritual traditions become so divergently politicized in the postcolonial era? The chapter accounts for this divergence in terms of differing colonial ideologies of racial subordination regarding Africans versus Indians in the articulation of hierarchy and religion in the southern Caribbean, as well as their reiterative effects within the field of postcolonial multicultural politics that emerged in the time-released wake of decolonization. Indeed, colonial ideologies of racial subordination continue to cast their spell across the terrain of religious and cultural politics in Trinidad and Tobago, despite the aims of activists on both sides to contest colonial ideology and overturn the colonization of spiritual consciousness inherited from the past. The analysis proceeds with an understanding of diasporas as alternative counter-nationalisms, and as resources for emergent postcolonialisms.

Andrea C. Abrams

Published in print:

2014

Published Online:

March 2016

ISBN:

9780814705230

eISBN:

9780814705254

Item type:

book

Publisher:

NYU Press

DOI:

10.18574/nyu/9780814705230.001.0001

Subject:

Religion, Religion and Society

Blackness, as a concept, is extremely fluid: it can refer to cultural and ethnic identity, socio-political status, an aesthetic and embodied way of being, a social and political consciousness, or a ...
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Blackness, as a concept, is extremely fluid: it can refer to cultural and ethnic identity, socio-political status, an aesthetic and embodied way of being, a social and political consciousness, or a diasporic kinship. It is used as a description of skin color ranging from the palest cream to the richest chocolate; as a marker of enslavement, marginalization, criminality, filth, or evil; or as a symbol of pride, beauty, elegance, strength, and depth. Despite the fact that it is elusive and difficult to define, blackness serves as one of the most potent and unifying domains of identity. This book offers an ethnographic study of blackness as it is understood within a specific community—that of the First Afrikan Church, a middle-class Afrocentric congregation in Atlanta, Georgia. Drawing on nearly two years of participant observation and in-depth interviews, the book examines how this community has employed Afrocentrism and Black theology as a means of negotiating the unreconciled natures of thoughts and ideals that are part of being both black and American. Specifically, it examines the ways in which First Afrikan's construction of community is influenced by shared understandings of blackness, and probes the means through which individuals negotiate the tensions created by competing constructions of their black identity. Although Afrocentrism operates as the focal point of this discussion, the book examines questions of political identity, religious expression, and gender dynamics through the lens of a unique black church.Less

God and Blackness : Race, Gender, and Identity in a Middle Class Afrocentric Church

Andrea C. Abrams

Published in print: 2014-03-21

Blackness, as a concept, is extremely fluid: it can refer to cultural and ethnic identity, socio-political status, an aesthetic and embodied way of being, a social and political consciousness, or a diasporic kinship. It is used as a description of skin color ranging from the palest cream to the richest chocolate; as a marker of enslavement, marginalization, criminality, filth, or evil; or as a symbol of pride, beauty, elegance, strength, and depth. Despite the fact that it is elusive and difficult to define, blackness serves as one of the most potent and unifying domains of identity. This book offers an ethnographic study of blackness as it is understood within a specific community—that of the First Afrikan Church, a middle-class Afrocentric congregation in Atlanta, Georgia. Drawing on nearly two years of participant observation and in-depth interviews, the book examines how this community has employed Afrocentrism and Black theology as a means of negotiating the unreconciled natures of thoughts and ideals that are part of being both black and American. Specifically, it examines the ways in which First Afrikan's construction of community is influenced by shared understandings of blackness, and probes the means through which individuals negotiate the tensions created by competing constructions of their black identity. Although Afrocentrism operates as the focal point of this discussion, the book examines questions of political identity, religious expression, and gender dynamics through the lens of a unique black church.

This chapter discusses how West African art traders adjusted their commercial practices to North American economic realities. Thirty years ago very few traders came to North America; they sold much ...
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This chapter discusses how West African art traders adjusted their commercial practices to North American economic realities. Thirty years ago very few traders came to North America; they sold much of their inventory to gallery owners and to small numbers of private clients. In the late 1990s, the number of traders bringing objects to North America increased exponentially. There are two possible reasons for the expansion. The excitement surrounding the Museum of Modern Art's 1984 exhibit, Primitivism in Twentieth-Century Art, to consider the first reason, augmented the legitimacy and increased the value of tribal art. This attracted new groups of collectors looking to invest in objects the value of which would quickly increase. The appeal of Afrocentrism, to consider the second reason, triggered much interest in Africa—including interest in African art—in African American communities. In Harlem, African American shoppers have bought the aforementioned Ghanaian “kente” cloth strips and hats from West African vendors. West African beads, incense, amulets, jewelry, and “kente” products, according to West African vendors in Harlem, underscored Afrocentric identification with Africa.Less

New World Circuits

Published in print: 2008-12-15

This chapter discusses how West African art traders adjusted their commercial practices to North American economic realities. Thirty years ago very few traders came to North America; they sold much of their inventory to gallery owners and to small numbers of private clients. In the late 1990s, the number of traders bringing objects to North America increased exponentially. There are two possible reasons for the expansion. The excitement surrounding the Museum of Modern Art's 1984 exhibit, Primitivism in Twentieth-Century Art, to consider the first reason, augmented the legitimacy and increased the value of tribal art. This attracted new groups of collectors looking to invest in objects the value of which would quickly increase. The appeal of Afrocentrism, to consider the second reason, triggered much interest in Africa—including interest in African art—in African American communities. In Harlem, African American shoppers have bought the aforementioned Ghanaian “kente” cloth strips and hats from West African vendors. West African beads, incense, amulets, jewelry, and “kente” products, according to West African vendors in Harlem, underscored Afrocentric identification with Africa.

This chapter provides a discussion of Martin Bernal's third volume of Black Athena, published in 2006, with a view toward Bernal's continued relevance in a changing social, political, and ...
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This chapter provides a discussion of Martin Bernal's third volume of Black Athena, published in 2006, with a view toward Bernal's continued relevance in a changing social, political, and intellectual landscape. Previous criticisms of Bernal's work to the contrary notwithstanding, I argue that Bernal examples the scholarly methods for historical inquiries about the past, particularly as they concern cultural heritage and cultural appropriation. The case of an African Apollo might resonate to those interested in African heritage, and even in a postcolonial context where hybridity trumps “origins,” the study of Apollo's African analogs leads us down many productive paths. The chapter examines Bernal's arguments for an African "origin" of Apollo, like a "Black Athena," and the attendant sociocultural and scholarly problems associated with such a claim.Less

Patrice D. Rankine

Published in print: 2011-10-01

This chapter provides a discussion of Martin Bernal's third volume of Black Athena, published in 2006, with a view toward Bernal's continued relevance in a changing social, political, and intellectual landscape. Previous criticisms of Bernal's work to the contrary notwithstanding, I argue that Bernal examples the scholarly methods for historical inquiries about the past, particularly as they concern cultural heritage and cultural appropriation. The case of an African Apollo might resonate to those interested in African heritage, and even in a postcolonial context where hybridity trumps “origins,” the study of Apollo's African analogs leads us down many productive paths. The chapter examines Bernal's arguments for an African "origin" of Apollo, like a "Black Athena," and the attendant sociocultural and scholarly problems associated with such a claim.

Black Athena's first volume consists mainly of an extended historiographical discussion, placing its author's arguments within – and against – a complex history of European intellectual engagement ...
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Black Athena's first volume consists mainly of an extended historiographical discussion, placing its author's arguments within – and against – a complex history of European intellectual engagement with ancient Greece. Some (relatively small) part of the intense ensuing debates has attended to and indeed protested at BA's apparent lack of close interest in Egypt, let alone any other part of Africa, in its own right as opposed to its possible influence on Greece. However, discussion of this aspect of BA's own intellectual genealogies and affiliations has focused largely – and often highly polemically – on the relationship between Bernal's project and that of the African‐diasporic, romantic Afrocentric tradition. Little interest has been shown in BA's relation to past or present intellectual currents within sub‐Saharan Africa itself, even those which might aptly be described as ‘Egyptocentric’. This paper attempts to explore some such connections. It looks at three of these, seeking briefly to trace their interconnections: The parallels and divergences between Bernal's work and influence and those of Senegalese historian Cheikh Anta Diop and his followers; The ideas and rhetorics of ‘African Renaissance’, as espoused especially in Thabo Mbeki's South Africa; The use made of Egyptian ‘myths of origin’ by certain contemporary African intellectuals, in particular by three of these: the multi‐disciplinary Ugandan scholar and activist Dani Nabudere, the Congo (Brazzaville) born linguist‐historian Theophile Obenga, and in the later work of Ghanaian novelist Ayi Kwei Armah.Less

Stephen Howe

Published in print: 2011-10-01

Black Athena's first volume consists mainly of an extended historiographical discussion, placing its author's arguments within – and against – a complex history of European intellectual engagement with ancient Greece. Some (relatively small) part of the intense ensuing debates has attended to and indeed protested at BA's apparent lack of close interest in Egypt, let alone any other part of Africa, in its own right as opposed to its possible influence on Greece. However, discussion of this aspect of BA's own intellectual genealogies and affiliations has focused largely – and often highly polemically – on the relationship between Bernal's project and that of the African‐diasporic, romantic Afrocentric tradition. Little interest has been shown in BA's relation to past or present intellectual currents within sub‐Saharan Africa itself, even those which might aptly be described as ‘Egyptocentric’. This paper attempts to explore some such connections. It looks at three of these, seeking briefly to trace their interconnections: The parallels and divergences between Bernal's work and influence and those of Senegalese historian Cheikh Anta Diop and his followers; The ideas and rhetorics of ‘African Renaissance’, as espoused especially in Thabo Mbeki's South Africa; The use made of Egyptian ‘myths of origin’ by certain contemporary African intellectuals, in particular by three of these: the multi‐disciplinary Ugandan scholar and activist Dani Nabudere, the Congo (Brazzaville) born linguist‐historian Theophile Obenga, and in the later work of Ghanaian novelist Ayi Kwei Armah.

In A Book of Beginnings (1881) the English poet and radical Gerald Massey (1828‐1907) combined the findings of evolutionary biology with his own comparative study of language and myth to argue that ...
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In A Book of Beginnings (1881) the English poet and radical Gerald Massey (1828‐1907) combined the findings of evolutionary biology with his own comparative study of language and myth to argue that Egyptian religion and mythology were the roots of European civilisation. Massey's use of comparative philology and mythology has much in common with Martin Bernal's own methodology in Black Athena and fittingly Massey – who also insisted on treating Egypt as an indigenous African civilisation – has recently found a new audience among radical North American Afrocentrists. However, in stark contrast to the political context of later Afrocentrism, Massey was a colonial enthusiast who lauded the achievements of empire in his often jingoistic verse. The ideological gulf between Gerald Massey and his twentieth‐century African American appropriation demonstrates how strikingly similar Afrocentric discourses can arise from conflicting contexts and can be used for conflicting ends.Less

Brian H. Murray

Published in print: 2011-10-01

In A Book of Beginnings (1881) the English poet and radical Gerald Massey (1828‐1907) combined the findings of evolutionary biology with his own comparative study of language and myth to argue that Egyptian religion and mythology were the roots of European civilisation. Massey's use of comparative philology and mythology has much in common with Martin Bernal's own methodology in Black Athena and fittingly Massey – who also insisted on treating Egypt as an indigenous African civilisation – has recently found a new audience among radical North American Afrocentrists. However, in stark contrast to the political context of later Afrocentrism, Massey was a colonial enthusiast who lauded the achievements of empire in his often jingoistic verse. The ideological gulf between Gerald Massey and his twentieth‐century African American appropriation demonstrates how strikingly similar Afrocentric discourses can arise from conflicting contexts and can be used for conflicting ends.

This concluding chapter summarizes the study's key findings and presents some final thoughts. The Afrocentrism practiced at the First Afrikan Presbyterian Church employs essentialist constructions of ...
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This concluding chapter summarizes the study's key findings and presents some final thoughts. The Afrocentrism practiced at the First Afrikan Presbyterian Church employs essentialist constructions of blackness and Africanness in order to meet the needs of a community whose knowledge of its African origins has been fractured; whose sense of connection to Christianity has been undermined by Eurocentric biblical interpretations; and whose feelings of assimilation into the larger American culture are not fully realized despite their middle-class status. Afrocentrism supplies an explanation for the community's disconnection from their ancestral, spiritual, and national moorings through arguments of deliberate marginalization of blackness and privileging of whiteness. It also argues that the remedy lies in arguments of a transcendent and timeless blackness that naturally inheres in all people of African descent.Less

The Benediction : Ashe Ashe Ashe O

Andrea C. Abrams

Published in print: 2014-03-21

This concluding chapter summarizes the study's key findings and presents some final thoughts. The Afrocentrism practiced at the First Afrikan Presbyterian Church employs essentialist constructions of blackness and Africanness in order to meet the needs of a community whose knowledge of its African origins has been fractured; whose sense of connection to Christianity has been undermined by Eurocentric biblical interpretations; and whose feelings of assimilation into the larger American culture are not fully realized despite their middle-class status. Afrocentrism supplies an explanation for the community's disconnection from their ancestral, spiritual, and national moorings through arguments of deliberate marginalization of blackness and privileging of whiteness. It also argues that the remedy lies in arguments of a transcendent and timeless blackness that naturally inheres in all people of African descent.